WALL\THERAPY: More Than Just Murals
July 2021 - April 2019
WALL\THERAPY is an art and community intervention project out of Rochester, NY, using public murals as a means to transform the urban landscape, inspire, and build community.
Artist Alice Mizrachi, local students, and I jumping in front of a mural we painted.
Mural by the artist Case.
Organization’s mission and vision
Transform walls, building, and neighborhoods to spark inspiration in individuals and communities alike.
WALL\THERAPY strives to beautify Rochester’s urban landscape, igniting a community dialogue and inspire Rochesterians to view the Image City, a moniker originally attributed to Kodak, in a proud, new way.
Me holding the 2013 WALL\THERAPY catalog book that I designed.
Each catalog book was embossed and hand sprayed with spray paint.
Project 1: The 2013 catalog book
WALL\THERAPY brings local, national and international artists together to paint murals in a week long festival. Artists are given a wall (or two) in one of Rochester’s neighborhoods. The idea is to spread the murals out in order to encourage people to explore neighborhoods they normally wouldn’t.
After every year a catalog book is designed, printed, and distributed to help memorialize the yearly festival and raise money for next year. My involvement with WALL\THERAPY started while I was still completing my degree at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The manager of the school’s print shop that I was working at happens to be the co-curator of WALL\THERAPY. He gave me the opportunity to design the yearly catalog book for 2013 because I fell in love with the organization’s mission and community outreach.
Being an all digital major, designing for print had its challenges. Working at the print shop gave me soft skills, but a lot of the learning was through trial and error. Before starting the project I spent hours in the RIT Barnes and Noble looking at magazines and taking photos of layouts I liked. Then after several iterations, late nights, a few lost trees, the WALL\THERAPY 2013 catalog book was created.
The WALL\THERAPY 2013 catalog book won AAF Regional Gold and District Silver award for Professional Print Design. The book is also in the private library of Martha Cooper, a famous street art photographer, and can publicly be seen at the Urban Nations Museum in Berlin, Germany.
A shot of the day the new website went live
Screenshot of Google Street Art Project site.
Project 2: WEBsite enhancements
In 2014 I organized and managed WALL\THERAPY’s invite to the Google Street Art Project powered by Google Cultural Institute. In that same year, the WALL\THERAPY website was updated in order to incorporate Google’s Street Art API.
